“Uneducated” Chinese supervise Ghanaian Engineers

*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, Ph. D.

** I recently spent about two months in Ghana, and the next series of poems will

recount my observations and experiences. Stay tuned!

Chinese invasion

Silent like hawks

Soaring with grace

Poised for action

Ah! Ghanaians

Like cultural nomads

Roam aimlessly, lost

In the land of our birth

Foreigners invoke all

They summon us all

To cradles of insults

To cradles of racism

To cradles of depravity

To cradles of poverty

See Chinese supervisors

At road-building sites

Stocky like Chinese rice

Foaming with imperiousness

Hands drawn like a sword

Aimed at timid Ghanaians

See Chinese supervisors

Supervising local engineers

Ah! See KWASI AMPONSEM

Decorated with a KNUST BSc

First Class Honors, KNUST

Bachelor’s in Civil Engineering

Oh! He is on his knees

Ghanaians on their knees

Kneeling on their degrees

Well-educated Ghanaians

Taking instructions from Chinese

We prostrate before all others

Chinese, Indians, Syrians, Whites

Less-educated, schooled Chinese

Chinese with limited vocabularies

Stretching China-made English

Supervising KWASI AMPONSEM

Chachzi [KWASI] you goes

Chachzi you comes

Chachzi you moves

Chachzi you stands, sits

Chachzi you stones, sands

Chachzi you monkey fools

Chachzi me love small girls

Chachzi me love Ghana woman

Chinese invasion

For our oil

For our gold

For our timber

For our market

Our elites look on

The elitist thieves

The pen-robbers

Look on like buffoons

Foraging for bribes

For Chinese perfumed rice

For Chinese toothpicks

For Chinese hair-pieces

For Chinese coffins

Our troubling signs

Self-fulfilling all

Of inferior “blackness”

Of packaged inferiority

Of fawning dependency

Of giving in to “whiteness”

Any semblances of “white”

The Euro-Americans

The Syrians, Lebanese

Today Chinese-Whites

Our “white” diviners

Throwing rice at us

Me Buroni Syndrome

Our “white” superiors

Ah! The nursery rhyme

The Best is from the West

Chinese invasion

Silent like hawks

Soaring with grace

With claws poised

For our oil

For our gold

For our timber

For our market

Our elites look on

The elitist thieves

The pen-robbers

Look on like buffoons

Foraging for bribes

For Chinese rice

For Chinese toothpicks

For Chinese hair-pieces

Our archives of inferiority

Our geopolitics of greed

Our mummified dependency

*Akadu N. Mensema, Ph. D., is a nationalist Denkyira beauty. She is a trained oral

historian cum sociologist and Professor in the USA. She lives in Pennsylvania with

her great mentor and teaches Africa-area studies at a college in Maryland. In her

pastime, she writes what critics have called “populist hyperbolic, satirical”

poetry. She can be reached at akadumensema@yahoo.com